Transmigrating over ten thousand years late, I was forced to become a mighty presence

These demons mostly maintained human forms, but their appearances varied in countless strange and unusual ways.

Some were lurking amidst the clouds, with faces red as blood and grotesque tongues lolling out, some had heads densely covered with hair making it impossible to distinguish the front from the back, and others resembled pale children, surrounded by eerie ghostly flames.

These demons are the result of the transformation of dead beings. Under the erosion of the evening sunlight, their souls and spirits were lost, and their most basic forms began to deform in bizarre ways.

Being of low intelligence, even the most basic breathing technique has not been mastered by these demons. Having existed for hundreds of years, they had only barely achieved the Qi Transformation Stage.

Despite Shen Yuan’s injuries, such demons pose no danger to him.

However, the existence of these demons signifies the erosion of this world by that monstrous demon.

Shen Yuan sighed quietly, and with a flick of his right forefinger, the Primordial Elemental Qi transformed into a spiritual flame that easily swallowed the large number of approaching demons.

The demons issued mournful howls within the flame, but to no avail.

Underneath the setting sun, Shen Yuan walked amongst the desolate mountains. Any demon that came within a hundred meters was burned to ashes by the spiritual fire formed from the Primordial Elemental Qi.

Above the barren mountains, the mournful wails of the scorching demons echoed throughout dozens of miles.

In the villages located downhill, the villagers panicked thinking that the Mountain God was enraged, gathered to discuss how to worship the Mountain God in order to appease his anger.

…

Eleven-year-old Three-field Yuu sat in the yard, watching his father’s retreating figure with a worried expression.

Growing up in the village, at the age of eleven, Three-field Yuu could already be considered a household labor force, hence he clearly understood why his father was heading to the ancestral hall in the village.

Just two days ago, flames erupted and the cries of countless demons were heard from a tall mountain only a few miles away from the village.

The villagers living beneath the mountain were terrified, and many claimed that the Mountain God was angry and that sacrifices must be made to assuage his wrath.

But for villages far away from the city, this is undoubtedly a significant event.

The villagers, facing the threat of demons from the wilderness and barely surviving on the fruits of their year’s labor, had no extra food to offer the Mountain God.

Everyone knew that even the worshipped Mountain God was a demon.

They only ate meat, not grain.

The last time the village worshipped the Mountain God was three years ago.

Some villagers had refused to make sacrifices then, and a few months later the village was besieged by a demon attack.

The village elders believed that the demon attack was due to a few villagers refusing to perform sacrifices, and driven those villagers out of the village.

However, Three-field Yuu vaguely remembered, demon attacks happened frequently every year, so he couldn’t understand why that particular attack was linked to the Mountain God’s sacrifice.

But ever since then, one thing everybody in the village came to realise:

If you don’t want to be kicked out of the village and become a nomad, you must agree to the sacrifice to the Mountain God.

Even if the corn offered turns into bags of sand on the mountain, the village elders would only say that is how the Mountain God eats.

The Mountain God eats the corn and excretes it as these grains of sand.

Young Three-field Yuu found this concerning; even if the fact that the Mountain God does not eat corn is disregarded – the behavior of voiding and placing the waste back into the food sack disgusted him. He thought that the Mountain God certainly had no regard for cleanliness.

As his father’s figure disappearing from sight, Three-field Yuu, dusting his trousers, snuck out of the village all alone.

He knew very well the state of the food situation at home. This year, due to rampaging demons decimating many fields, the scarce harvest had diminished even further.

His mother just had a baby sister, and if they had to sacrifice for the Mountain God, the leftover grains would definitely not be enough for the four family members to pass the winter.

When that happens, the first to starve to death will certainly be the newly-born sister, just like how the not-even-a-year-old brother of the neighbor’s family was starved to death after the sacrifice to the Mountain God three years ago.

Three-field Yuu did not want to see such a thing happen, so he decided to find the Mountain God and make him renounce the sacrifice.

Three-field Yuu was running swiftly across the barren land, it was already afternoon, and dusk was approaching, when more demons would appear in the wilderness.

Even though the villagers had summarized some ways to avoid the demons, Three-field Yuu didn’t want to risk it.

Having sprinted all the way to the foot of the mountain, Three-field Yuu was panting, but he still gritted his teeth and followed the path the villagers usually took up the mountain.

Three-field Yuu remembered that the Mountain God of the high mountain was a fearsomely large tree at the summit. The last time the village held a daytime sacrifice, he went up the mountain with the villagers and saw the great tree, leaving a deep impression on him.

Legend has it that after dusk, the God Tree of the Mountain would transform into a human form and wander in the world, and when dusk ended, it would return to the mountain and transform back into the Divine Tree.

Thinking about the legends of the Mountain God, he unwittingly climbed halfway up the mountain and was surprised to find that the mountain top was much quieter than usual.

Usually, even in the daytime, you would hear chilly whispers, malicious laughter and hair-raising apparitions on the mountain.

According to the village elders, these were powerful demons on the mountain, but they couldn’t show themselves until dusk and could only scare people in this way.

But today, when climbing the mountain, Three-field Yuu didn’t even see a single apparition or hear a single whisper.

And so, Three-field Yuu climbed to the top of the mountain and saw the God Tree of the Mountain.

The tree was dozens of meters high, its gigantic trunk was so vast that even five or six burly men couldn’t circle it, the thick roots surrounded the mountain and extended from the mountaintop to the mountainside.

What left the deepest impression on Three-field Yuu about the God Tree was a human-like twisted face in the middle of the tree trunk.

But when Three-field Yuu reached the mountaintop, he suddenly found that the usual twisted face on the God Tree had disappeared.

Instead, next to the mountaintop tree, there was a small wooden house built that he didn’t know when, tools like hoe and scissors were placed outside the wooden house, and an ancient bronze sword that was spotted with rust was even hung on the outer wall of the wooden house.

Three-field Yuu was stunned for a moment. He tilts his head to think and immediately remembers the legend where the Mountain God transforms into a human form and wanders the world.

Just then, the door opened.

Shen Yuan came out of the house, looking at the child who had appeared in his senses a long time ago.

The boy was wearing a coarsely stitched robe that barely covered his body, wearing a pair of woven straw sandals in the autumn wind, his face covered with dust from the sweat, only his bright eyes showed his excitement as they looked at Shen Yuan.

“Lord Mountain God!”

“You must be Lord Mountain God, right? Can you tell the village elders not to collect grain for sacrifice to the Mountain God anymore?”

“Our harvest wasn’t good this year because of the disaster, and my mother just had a baby sister. If grain is collected for sacrifice to the Mountain God, my sister will definitely die of hunger.”

“Can we owe this year’s tribute and pay it back to Lord Mountain God when we have a good harvest next year?”

Three-field Yuu looked at Shen Yuan with hope in his bright eyes.

From this brief conversation, Shen Yuan had vaguely understood what had happened.

In this chaotic world of demons, it isn’t just the demons that harm people. The evil of demons lies in killing, but the evil of human heart is far worse than the demons.

Under Three-field Yuu’s gaze, Shen Yuan gently shook his head and said:

“I am not the Mountain God.”

Three-field Yuu’s hopeful eyes suddenly dimmed.

“But I do have some ideas about the sacrifice.”

Three-field Yuu looked at Shen Yuan with a puzzled look in his eyes.

“What’s your name, young one?”

“My name is Three-field Yuu. My father said I was born on the day when our family opened the third field, so he named me Three-field Yuu.”

Shen Yuan extended his index finger, pointed it at the center of Three-field Yuu’s forehead, and said softly:

“From today onwards, you are the Mountain God of this mountain!”